This is part of my ongoing observation of the #fakenews phenomena meme.
Note that some of the latest news is that Chairman of the German Social Democratic Party, Thomas Oppermann has pushed forward a proposed law that will make companies such those that run social networking sites financially responsible for allowing the posting of fake news. The law would give the companies 24 hours to remove the item(s) or face a €500,000 / $522,575 penalty.
Forbes notes the following using Facebook as an example of how fake news and big money correlate and how this will impact censorship under the guise of interest in “the truth”:
…the credibility of its platform is critical for user growth and engagement, which in turn drives advertising revenues for the company. Facebook’s algorithm prioritizes “engagement” and fake stories which are surprising attract more user attention, thus engaging them better. This leads to wider circulation of these stories. Facebook’s plan to tackle this problem is to empower users so that they can report fake stories and spammers’ financial incentives can be disrupted…given that fake stories are more viral (designed to be that way) than regular content, we believe ensuring the authenticity of content on its platform is critical for Facebook’s growth.
Indiana University’s Network Science Institute’s Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia has noted, “the power of the internet to monetize false information.”
Phys.org notes, “Google and Facebook recently banned the use of their advertisement services on websites that post fake news, for example”1 which means that there are financial stakes on every side of this hyper-dimensional coin.
Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media is behind the tool named Hoaxy which seeks to visually plot pattern as to how that which has been determined to be fake news spreads online. Of course, terming the tool “Hoaxy” implies that it deals with hoaxes when fake news could be based on mistakes or reporting on that which the mainstream media decides to ignore and not based on hoaxes—so, are reports on “Hoaxy” fake news?
Project lead, professor and director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Indiana University’s Filippo Menczer2 noted, “We’ve now even seen examples of fake news inspiring real-life danger, such as the gunman who fired shots in a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor in response to false claims of child trafficking.” Now, as far as I have been able to see mainstream media has dealt with the pizzagate issue in just this very manner: they simply assert that it is false based on an argument from authority in a “Thus saith the mainstream media” manner. They do not review the facts, they do not explain away the evidence, etc. but merely assert that there is true news and that pizzagate is fake news. For examples of this see:
New York Times on #pizzagate and #fakenews
Washington Post on #pizzagate, #spiritcooking & #fakenews
Thus, one of the battles to be fought is: who watches the watchers? Who determines that which is and is not fake news? Clearly there will be obvious cases but what about more obscure claims based on “anonymous sources tell the mainstream media that…” well, that no one can double check and so we must take their word for it.
Another aspect of the Google and Facebook banning of that which is asserted to be fake news brings us directly to the issue of censorship.
Phys.org, paraphrases the IU Network Science Institute’s Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia to the effect that via Hoaxy one can “see results that show both incidents of the claim in the media and attempts to fact-check it by independent organizations such as snopes.com, politifact.com and factcheck.org.” But again, who determined that these websites are independent and who will fact check them? We are told that Hoaxy’s “results display headlines that appeared on sites known to publish inaccurate, unverified or satirical claims based upon lists compiled and published by reputable news and fact-checking organizations.” Facebook has now “let users and third-party fact-checkers like Snopes flag stories as fake news.”
Filippo Menczer notes, “Importantly, we do not decide what is true or false. Not all claims you can visualize on Hoaxy are false, nor are we saying that the fact-checkers are 100 percent correct all of the time. Hoaxy is a tool to observe how unverified stories and the fact-checking of those stories spread on public social media. It’s up to users to evaluate the evidence about a claim and its rebuttal.” So, in order words: you might as well ignore Hoaxy and exercise common sense.
At a Techonomy Conference Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO noted, “Personally, I think the idea that fake news on Facebook, it’s a very small amount of the content, influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea.” He also affirmed his belief that most people can discern real from fake on their own.
Directly following the 2016 AD presidential election Zuckerber stated:
Of all the content on Facebook…Only a very small amount is fake news and hoaxes…this makes it extremely unlikely hoaxes changed the outcome of this election in one direction or the other. That said, we don’t want any hoaxes on Facebook…We have already launched work enabling our community to flag hoaxes and fake news, and there is more we can do here. We have made progress, and we will continue to work on this to improve further.
Also, in a later discussion with Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg, Zuckerberg noted:
…we build technology and we feel responsible for how it’s used. We don’t write the news that people read on the platform, but at the same time we also know that we do a lot more than just distribute the news, and we’re an important part of the public discourse.
Many “real news” sources, such as Business Insider’s Steve Kovach3 are making statements such as, “studies like this one from BuzzFeed were published that showed hoaxes and fake news stories, like the Pope endorsing Donald Trump for president, were some of the most shared and engaging stories on Facebook.”
This is a riot because the fact is that, for example, Hillary Clinton and Brian Williams are currently warning us against fake news even when they themselves are personally responsible for promulgating fake news of their own: Williams’ punishment was to be temporarily suspended from broadcasting and Clinton’s punishment was to attempt to become the most powerful person on Earth—actually that was the USA’s punishment for her fake news.
Now, BuzzFeed is reporting on fake news?!?!? They are responsible for fake news in the form of manufacturing news in the form of a hit piece Chip and Joanna Gaines because their pastor holds to an at least 5,000 years old tradition of disapproval of LGBTQP—a topic that never come up on their reality TV show “Fixer Upper” which is about home remodeling, etc.
FYI: the Proceedings of the 25th International Conference Companion on World Wide Web has published a paper titled Hoaxy: A Platform for Tracking Online Misinformation, the abstract of which notes that “Massive amounts of misinformation have been observed to spread in uncontrolled fashion across social media” which, of course, is true. However, who is going to develop a tool called “Shystery,” or what have you, which will track, for example, the 24 hour news cycle or the print published news?
The paper notes, “Examples include rumors, hoaxes, fake news, and conspiracy theories…Here we introduce Hoaxy, a platform for the collection, detection, and analysis of online misinformation and its related factchecking efforts.”
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